not remembering.....

Other than the fact that T called and made an appt for me with pdoc because of my huge anxiety/mixed manic state recently, I don't remember much from session, I don't remember what she said. I remember being there and flopping on her couch and her wanting me to be present and giving me a sheet of paper about identifying feelings.......but I don't remember what she said so much. Although I did try to be present, I must not have been as much as I thought......the room sort of kept spinning out of focus, very odd.
This happen often to others, where you just don't remember much about session, about what T said????

You must have really been dissociating. You were facing some tough stuff?

Yes this happens to me a lot. There are a lot of sessions that I cannot remember at all. Once the room looked quite strange - like a 3D film when it isn't flat, but looks a bit odd - hard to describe really. Sometimes I am not aware of T being there. Actually I know he is there and I know his name, but his name doesn't quite fit him - like he is just a thing - again hard to put into words. I always tell myself that at least I went and that was a good thing. Hope the pdoc appointment goes OK.

It has happened once to me, when I had first started seeing my T. I talked to her about it at the next session, and she promised to try and be more aware of when it seems like I'm dissociating, and try to help bring me back in to the room.

I don't think this has happened to me, but I do think it must be quite common among clients who have difficulties with emotion regulation, as several of the therapies for BPD (schema therapy and sometimes BPD) recommend recording sessions so the client can listen to them later, because they recognise the client's emotional arousal is so all over the place that they won't recall much of what is said. I guess if this problem persists you could talk to T about doing this? I've always resisted it because I HATE hearing my own voice, butthe flip side is that it's quite comforting having T's voice to listen to, and it can be done easily on smart phones now without loads of clunky equipment.

I hope that the pdoc appointment can help you with the anxiety/mania stuff. It sounds like you have a lot on your plate right now

just had to do with the mixed manic state I think, I am having real trouble focusing, and am highly distractable......there is some tough stuff relating to my marriage though that we are discussing and I am having a hard time. I am supposed to think of compromise options between either being subservient/treated like a child or getting run over when I try to be assertive.......I am having trouble with this, but I am just having trouble THINKING at all these days because my mind wants to run 500 different directions and settle on none.....grrrr.

I relate to the room looking odd, that has happened before too, and then T looks odd too and doesn't seem to fit into the room and doesn't seem to be herself quite and I can't recognize her for a bit.....a surreal thing! Happens when I am in my odd manic states......I wonder if it is actually a psychotic thing with me sometimes.....

I've had that and I think it was because I wasn't paying attention. I was more wrapped up in my own thoughts/emotions.

And it is really frustrating because I know she said important stuff and I remember liking it but it's gone...

So, one thing I'm trying to do is to slow down. I'm usually feeling a bit of a rush because I have my list of things I want to talk about and I try to plow through them.

The downside of that is that I'm not as 'present' as I should be. So, now, I try to slow down, listen and take notes. I've also asked T to make sure I've heard her and internalized it and have made notes to refer to later.

T notices and tries to bring me back and usually does, but today was just so odd.....
I do have a lot, as much as I can possibly handle without being in the process of losing my mind too!
T did say something about me feeling/being overstimulated and so unable to focus, that would have something to do with the emotional regulation/arousal......
I wonder if she would agree to record sessions for me or not?!

I feel stupid and inarticulate right now, sheeshh.....that being a byproduct of the weird mental state I am in, hard to focus even on this because my mind is running somewhere else while I am trying to type.....

you do such a good job with your note-taking. that would be one way to pay more attention, keep the pace slower too perhaps and have something to help you remember later when you are processing.....

Yes it happens to me tons. I dissociate A LOT. My T always tries to bring me back as soon as she catches me heading that way. She is pretty quick at catching it now but I still feel like I do miss a lot of stuff that is said because most of the time if she asks me if I heard what she said to me I just say yes out of guilt for not being able to stay present...

I forget a lot of heavy issues we talk about...sometimes bits of the conversation come back to me a couple days later when I'm not so emotionally stirred up. Sometimes I have like de ja vu sense in following sessions. I know some of my forgetting is dissociation, but sometimes I feel like there is just no more room in my brain to process what is going on. When my brain is running at high speed, I can't really focus on the current conversation.

Note taking is a good idea...I never thought of that

yes this happens to me a lot also.in fact it gets me in trouble sometimes because she will talk about the schedual and i wont remember that she tells me that she will be away.it caused a huge issue a few months ago.she writes it all down for me now.i also write as soon as i get home everything i can remember about what said so i will not forget so much it helps a lot but i do still forget a lot.i even wrote a list of goals once and i forgot and she brought them in and i just about accused her of writing them.

I do this a lot as well. Sometimes I am dissociating, sometimes it's my ADD symptoms, and sometimes I am simply tired and out of it. I hate when I get in my car and then realize I wasn't present. It's very frustrating. I need to talk to T about it more, because i don't think he's aware of how bad I get.

thanks for your replies, it's comforting to know that others understand what I am dealing with.
yes, it's not always dissociating, sometimes it's just not being able to pay full attention because my mind is racing ahead or in 29 different directions and I can't focus, or I am thinking about other things, and then realize later that I wasn't paying attention, I wasn't in the moment.....T knows when I dissociate, but not always when it's hard for me to simply focus.
sometimes it's just too heavy to think about too and I feel weary of focusing on the hard things......
at least I haven't forgotten homework yet, I seem to be paying enough attention when she assigns it that I do remember what she assigned......I even managed to remember what she assigned yesterday though I would rather have forgotten it!

Sometimes I think we may forget the homework on purpose! I know that I do. I will tell her ahead of time if I am not able to do the assignment. Then she turns it around and says, "Okay. Then maybe you can write about why you can't do it. What are you afraid of?"

Yes, they always turn it around into some form of another question!

This has been happening a lot to me lately. I've been zoning out at least once every session for about a month now. My T notices and will ask where I am or what's going on. Most of the time I don't know, I usually can't even talk...I just shake my head or say I don't feel good.

One time after I came back, T asked me what happens and what it feels like. I told him that I can hear him talking but I'm not really listening, my heart starts to beat fast, I get shaky and panicky. He told me that something he said incites panic in me and it means we're getting somewhere big. He told me that he wants me to tell him when I start to feel spacy and just let him know when I feel it coming on so we can deal with it before I'm too far gone.

I hate when it happens because that is when I have so much trouble remembering the session and what he said. I try to journal that night so I at least have some memory of what happened and what was said..it does help a lot!

that panicky feeling has happened to me a couple times recently too.... I told T, actually I was like OMG what is happening, I am having a weird attack of some sort here!! She had me do deep breathing to calm me......and told me she thought it was big feelings coming up. I think she is right, she was reading in my journaling about something big, a loss, a grief....and she thought it was grief and pain coming up and I was feeling it as an attack of anxiety-like feelings.....

I can't say I've ever dissociated, but I really wish I could remember every single thing T has ever said to me. I think I wish for this because I'm attached to her.

probably so!